Ideally you would think they would set ambient temp (via heat or a/c as needed) to a flat 21C/70F or so which is what most people would have as an average 'comfortable' temp. 28C might be a bit high (82F) while the 18C (64F) is a bit chilly.
Although, considering these are 'industrial' type systems, you might actually subject them to a much wider dual temp test (15C/60F and 32C/90F) which you might find in a warehouse or factory floor.
This is what I'm referring to. If someone deploys this at factory floor, temperature variations might be completely out of your standard AC'ed office block.
Knowing ambiet temp would definitely help people estimating the dT figures that it can handle.
The ambient temperature for all our thermal testing is between 70 and 74F.
For one of our previous industrial PC reviews, I did the stress testing at multiple temperature points - http://www.anandtech.com/show/6494/aleutia-relia-i... , but the overall feedback in terms of balance between time spent on a review and actionable results was that room temperature testing is more than enough.
If the customer is ordering, say, 20K or 30K worth of these PCs, I am sure Logic Supply would be more than happy to deliver those graphs for the particular workloads to be used at different temperature points [ just my opinion :) ]
The issue I think he is raising is the typical ambient temperature of a ventilated kiosk or summertime warehouse is probably 90F. Who knows how high it is when not ventilated. For a review of an industrial PC, it would probably be appropriate to increase your ambient temp to real-world scenarios.
Our facilities routinely top 105 in August. I had to use a laptop cooler to keep my Asus ultrabook from slowing down excessively. I updated both required PC's to large CPU coolers (Noctua NH-12) and filled every fan slot (plus we ALWAYS use dust filters or else the motherboards get so dusty that when it gets humid they short out on wet dust).
Temperature is a valid question. I have seen boxes in digital signage that get insanely hot (think 130 degrees F). You not only need fans, but you want to ventilate the box the computer is in. An old server Delta fan for an intake and an outtake will drop an enclosure down to five or ten degrees above ambient.
Outside temps matter considerably in the summer. As does humidity.
Yet the fins are oriented in the worst possible manner convection wise. Vertical fins on the sides would be far more efficient than the horizontal fins on top. That assumes it is oriented as pictured. If the box itself is mounted so that the fins are perpendicular to the ground then it will be fine.
Hi ddriver, Darek here from Logic Supply, thanks for your comment. The fin designs for our chassis are partly driven by manufacturing methods. We utilize one-piece extrusions for their superior material properties and cost efficiencies (over say, casting or straight CNC). That does limit us somewhat in the orientations of our fin structures. Ultimately the layouts we go with are designed/tested for a balance of forced and natural convection (as well as installation flexibility for our customers and, to a lesser extent, aesthetics) in multiple orientations - like you said, with the chassis mounted on a vertical surface the fins are optimal, and that's very often how our customers deploy our systems.
Sure, you are extruding stuff like heat sink fins, it would be crazy to machine that. But you can just extrude the box with the sides flat, then bolt on auxiliary vertical fins, in that case you are set for both unit orientation cases.
Or you could punch series of square C holes to the sides and bed the inner part outward, maybe not all the way to 90 degree, like 45 or so would do it, creating less of fins and more of a cool looking "ribs".
Both solution in case you want to increase the cooling capacity, visual aesthetics aside, the way it is looks tidier. But you can't always have it both pretty and efficient at the same time.
There is a third option - hide the fins. In that case they will be more like pipes, essentially cover up the fins but leave holes on the bottom for air to come it. Also, air expands as it gets hotter, so making the holes wider towards the top will be beneficial to increasing the air flow rate.
I can't speak for this particular device, but I've bought similar-looking industrial PCs for field use in the past (made by Advantech), and they're typically mounted vertically in a cabinet or on a wall using a DIN-rail mount.
Seems like a pretty capable and up-to-date industrial PC for the money. I'm used to working with ones that are many, many more generations behind the curve.
As an electrical engineer who builds panels for machinery I loathe the idea of an AC-DC power adapter and a barrel plug, but it looks like you can order it with DC terminals on-board so that's fine. Not bad then!
Hi mattlach, Darek here from Logic Supply. Because we don't currently do any board-level development, we're limited to the motherboards available on the market. We are in talks with a number of motherboard manufacturers about creating additional options because we also see value in offering dual NIC connectivity in this form factor with Intel Core processing.
That said, our ML100G-10 system does provide 2x Intel-based LAN ports (https://www.logicsupply.com/ml100g-10) and we have a number of clients using that system for various networking applications.
Logic Supply sells the DA-1000 which has two Intel ethernet adapters and is passively cooled. Though it's CPU is based on the Bay Trail Atom, for a pfSense router project, it's probably sufficiently powerful AND would likely be a bit more efficient than a Skylake-based system.
Darek here from Logic Supply. That's correct, that's a thermal pad for the SSD. As silly as it may look, in our testing it resulted in a roughly 6-12°C drop in SSD temperature depending on what the system is doing.
I haven't ordered anything from Logic Supply in a few years, but I have done business with the company a few times for small orders. They were easy to deal with and I'd happily vouch for them putting together good fanless systems.
As usual for these UCFF reviews, I (sorely!) miss pictures of the actual cooling solution. I get that you don't want to disassemble it before testing (having to replace thermal paste and so on), but can't you at least do it afterwards? Does it take more than removing the four screws in the motherboard? I'm very interested in seeing the actual implementation of the passive cooling solution here.
As usual for these UCFF reviews, I (sorely!) miss pictures of the actual cooling solution. I get that you don't want to disassemble it before testing (having to replace thermal paste and so on), but can't you at least do it afterwards? Does it take more than removing the four screws in the motherboard? I'm very interested in seeing the actual implementation of the passive cooling solution here.
Would love to see comparisons to additional manufacturers. We have used Tangent for their Rugged Mini PC's and had great success. They were able to send us a demo unit, which Logic Supply was not; and were very flexible with the types of configurations we wanted in the machines. Worth looking into for anyone who is shopping for industrial fanless.
I still can't wrap my head around a $450 PC selling for $1150 because it's small. I get it, I understand all the reasons why, it still just doesn't make sense to me for 99.9999999% of consumers. Nobody has an extra 5 liters of space ANYWHERE around their desk?
Most people have that extra space, but these systems aren't intended for desktop use. They're targeted at industrial environments where dust ingestion due to active cooling would contribute to the early demise of a conventional computer. Consumers rarely need this kind of hardware unless they're doing something like HAM radio or another chore that needs a passively cooled design.
Yeah I kind of gathered that after posting my comment, but I think my comment is still applicable beyond this one specific box. The SFF space is one of the last bastions of "premium pricing" outside of corporate and "gaming". I mean what we have here is a super low power CPU, with an IGP, and basic RAM selling for the price of an alienware laptop. It's just hard to wrap my head around. I get it for industrial applications but not for everyday consumers.
Market is big enough that even NUCs while they are useless and overpriced for what they offer still sell. Good thing is: you don't have to buy them, you can just completely ignore them and move on :)
Look, I am a prime customer for this solution: I need a somewhat capable small server for a location - on this location I also need to run 2VM's which each uses their own NIC (I am looking at their Xeon equipped server with 6 x NIC, 32GB ECC RAM, and 4 drives in RAID6). All of this is going to be supporting a low maintenance, long periods of no-computers-and-very-little-web-traffic location. This is perfect.
What sets this one apart is that it is small, really small, and it has ZERO moving parts. It will not have a fan failure, it will not have a spinning disk doing all the things spinning disks do. It'll be dead quiet, run what I need for it to run, hidden away in a closet, running 24/7.
Of course i could build my very own, for probably half the price and double the specs, but this is not what I am looking for. This is not intended for home tinkers, and the price comes with turnkey (with warranty) setup, and I am willing to pay for that.
We need to end this "it can be done cheaper", someone needs to make a buck on putting capable systems together, with purpose not only to support gamers that would never buy it in the first place, and uses components that are not the 'cheapest possible available'. Otherwise all computers will just be either super expensive for coorporations, or super low budget like half of the SFF units out there today. Who the hell wants an i3 with cheap-ass RAM, slow spinning HD and then the capacity to push out 4k? Who ever buys that is an idiot. You want to build, build... You want to buy a gaming machine, buy a gaming machine, but if you don't understand the target segment of the market does not make it shit. You see computers as a commodity, I see them as things that cost does not really matter, but build quality and purpose does.
Buying this can will last me 5 years in the setting that I am looking for, the components are perhaps not the newest, but HQ stuff, and with no moving parts, protecting it through a HQ UPS, this bad boy will run quietly and smooth.
There are quite a few solutions that really require small form factor, although fanless is not always essential. I have had good luck with dust filters, although a sealed case would be awesome for humidity. Sometimes you simply need to tuck a tiny computer somewhere (often wall mounted between other equipment). That said, I have used tiny Atom boxes and run VM's through them, but they are not so stable. You can set up a Linux box and forget about it.
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zepi - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Out of curiosity, what kind of ambient temperatures do you have in your test-bench?There is quite a difference between 18C and 28C room temperature in this kind of test.
bill.rookard - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Ideally you would think they would set ambient temp (via heat or a/c as needed) to a flat 21C/70F or so which is what most people would have as an average 'comfortable' temp. 28C might be a bit high (82F) while the 18C (64F) is a bit chilly.Although, considering these are 'industrial' type systems, you might actually subject them to a much wider dual temp test (15C/60F and 32C/90F) which you might find in a warehouse or factory floor.
zepi - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
This is what I'm referring to. If someone deploys this at factory floor, temperature variations might be completely out of your standard AC'ed office block.Knowing ambiet temp would definitely help people estimating the dT figures that it can handle.
ganeshts - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
The ambient temperature for all our thermal testing is between 70 and 74F.For one of our previous industrial PC reviews, I did the stress testing at multiple temperature points - http://www.anandtech.com/show/6494/aleutia-relia-i... , but the overall feedback in terms of balance between time spent on a review and actionable results was that room temperature testing is more than enough.
If the customer is ordering, say, 20K or 30K worth of these PCs, I am sure Logic Supply would be more than happy to deliver those graphs for the particular workloads to be used at different temperature points [ just my opinion :) ]
Samus - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
The issue I think he is raising is the typical ambient temperature of a ventilated kiosk or summertime warehouse is probably 90F. Who knows how high it is when not ventilated. For a review of an industrial PC, it would probably be appropriate to increase your ambient temp to real-world scenarios.SkipPerk - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
Our facilities routinely top 105 in August. I had to use a laptop cooler to keep my Asus ultrabook from slowing down excessively. I updated both required PC's to large CPU coolers (Noctua NH-12) and filled every fan slot (plus we ALWAYS use dust filters or else the motherboards get so dusty that when it gets humid they short out on wet dust).Temperature is a valid question. I have seen boxes in digital signage that get insanely hot (think 130 degrees F). You not only need fans, but you want to ventilate the box the computer is in. An old server Delta fan for an intake and an outtake will drop an enclosure down to five or ten degrees above ambient.
Outside temps matter considerably in the summer. As does humidity.
Meteor2 - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I think most people go for 19 C these days if using heating. Uses 20% less energy than 21 C.eldakka - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
At least for this product being tested, the specifications from their website are:Operating Temperature Range 0°C ~ 50°C
Therefore, in theory at least, any ambient temperature likely to be found inside a livable room should be satisfactory for this device.
Can't speak for the other devices like the ECS or Zotac machines tho.
Ro_Ja - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
It looks like a big heat sink itself.tipoo - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
It is. It's fanless, uses the whole case as a heatsink.ddriver - Wednesday, March 1, 2017 - link
Yet the fins are oriented in the worst possible manner convection wise. Vertical fins on the sides would be far more efficient than the horizontal fins on top. That assumes it is oriented as pictured. If the box itself is mounted so that the fins are perpendicular to the ground then it will be fine.DarekLogic - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
Hi ddriver, Darek here from Logic Supply, thanks for your comment. The fin designs for our chassis are partly driven by manufacturing methods. We utilize one-piece extrusions for their superior material properties and cost efficiencies (over say, casting or straight CNC). That does limit us somewhat in the orientations of our fin structures. Ultimately the layouts we go with are designed/tested for a balance of forced and natural convection (as well as installation flexibility for our customers and, to a lesser extent, aesthetics) in multiple orientations - like you said, with the chassis mounted on a vertical surface the fins are optimal, and that's very often how our customers deploy our systems.ddriver - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
Sure, you are extruding stuff like heat sink fins, it would be crazy to machine that. But you can just extrude the box with the sides flat, then bolt on auxiliary vertical fins, in that case you are set for both unit orientation cases.Or you could punch series of square C holes to the sides and bed the inner part outward, maybe not all the way to 90 degree, like 45 or so would do it, creating less of fins and more of a cool looking "ribs".
Both solution in case you want to increase the cooling capacity, visual aesthetics aside, the way it is looks tidier. But you can't always have it both pretty and efficient at the same time.
There is a third option - hide the fins. In that case they will be more like pipes, essentially cover up the fins but leave holes on the bottom for air to come it. Also, air expands as it gets hotter, so making the holes wider towards the top will be beneficial to increasing the air flow rate.
ddriver - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
*bend, not bedAnonymousEngineer - Saturday, March 4, 2017 - link
I can't speak for this particular device, but I've bought similar-looking industrial PCs for field use in the past (made by Advantech), and they're typically mounted vertically in a cabinet or on a wall using a DIN-rail mount.SkipPerk - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
We do the same thing. It keeps them safely out of the way.dave_the_nerd - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I think there may be a typo on the last page:"Logic Supply's ML100G-50 is a solid step up from the Broadwell-based ML100G-50"
Don't you mean the Broadwell-based ML100G-30?
evilspoons - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Seems like a pretty capable and up-to-date industrial PC for the money. I'm used to working with ones that are many, many more generations behind the curve.As an electrical engineer who builds panels for machinery I loathe the idea of an AC-DC power adapter and a barrel plug, but it looks like you can order it with DC terminals on-board so that's fine. Not bad then!
mattlach - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
The only thing I'd use one of these for would be a nice compact and power sipping pfSense router box.IN order for me to do that, I'd need dual Intel NIC's though.
Why do all of these NUC's insist on either having only one NIC or using inferior Realtek NIC's you'd never want to use in a server-type setting?
DarekLogic - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Hi mattlach, Darek here from Logic Supply. Because we don't currently do any board-level development, we're limited to the motherboards available on the market. We are in talks with a number of motherboard manufacturers about creating additional options because we also see value in offering dual NIC connectivity in this form factor with Intel Core processing.That said, our ML100G-10 system does provide 2x Intel-based LAN ports (https://www.logicsupply.com/ml100g-10) and we have a number of clients using that system for various networking applications.
Thank you for your comment.
DarekLogic - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
Here's that ML100G-10 link without the errant parenthesis: https://www.logicsupply.com/ml100g-10BrokenCrayons - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Logic Supply sells the DA-1000 which has two Intel ethernet adapters and is passively cooled. Though it's CPU is based on the Bay Trail Atom, for a pfSense router project, it's probably sufficiently powerful AND would likely be a bit more efficient than a Skylake-based system.Shadowmaster625 - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
That huge white block is a thermal pad?DarekLogic - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Darek here from Logic Supply. That's correct, that's a thermal pad for the SSD. As silly as it may look, in our testing it resulted in a roughly 6-12°C drop in SSD temperature depending on what the system is doing.Thanks for the question.
BrokenCrayons - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I haven't ordered anything from Logic Supply in a few years, but I have done business with the company a few times for small orders. They were easy to deal with and I'd happily vouch for them putting together good fanless systems.Ranger1065 - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
Yawn.Valantar - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
As usual for these UCFF reviews, I (sorely!) miss pictures of the actual cooling solution. I get that you don't want to disassemble it before testing (having to replace thermal paste and so on), but can't you at least do it afterwards? Does it take more than removing the four screws in the motherboard? I'm very interested in seeing the actual implementation of the passive cooling solution here.Valantar - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
As usual for these UCFF reviews, I (sorely!) miss pictures of the actual cooling solution. I get that you don't want to disassemble it before testing (having to replace thermal paste and so on), but can't you at least do it afterwards? Does it take more than removing the four screws in the motherboard? I'm very interested in seeing the actual implementation of the passive cooling solution here.Spartacus00 - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
Would love to see comparisons to additional manufacturers. We have used Tangent for their Rugged Mini PC's and had great success. They were able to send us a demo unit, which Logic Supply was not; and were very flexible with the types of configurations we wanted in the machines. Worth looking into for anyone who is shopping for industrial fanless.fanofanand - Wednesday, March 1, 2017 - link
I still can't wrap my head around a $450 PC selling for $1150 because it's small. I get it, I understand all the reasons why, it still just doesn't make sense to me for 99.9999999% of consumers. Nobody has an extra 5 liters of space ANYWHERE around their desk?BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, March 1, 2017 - link
Most people have that extra space, but these systems aren't intended for desktop use. They're targeted at industrial environments where dust ingestion due to active cooling would contribute to the early demise of a conventional computer. Consumers rarely need this kind of hardware unless they're doing something like HAM radio or another chore that needs a passively cooled design.fanofanand - Wednesday, March 1, 2017 - link
Yeah I kind of gathered that after posting my comment, but I think my comment is still applicable beyond this one specific box. The SFF space is one of the last bastions of "premium pricing" outside of corporate and "gaming". I mean what we have here is a super low power CPU, with an IGP, and basic RAM selling for the price of an alienware laptop. It's just hard to wrap my head around. I get it for industrial applications but not for everyday consumers.milkod2001 - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
Market is big enough that even NUCs while they are useless and overpriced for what they offer still sell. Good thing is: you don't have to buy them, you can just completely ignore them and move on :)nowayandnohow - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
"you can just completely ignore them and move on"Exactly, stop whining and go to the market segment that targets what you need.
nowayandnohow - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
Look, I am a prime customer for this solution: I need a somewhat capable small server for a location - on this location I also need to run 2VM's which each uses their own NIC (I am looking at their Xeon equipped server with 6 x NIC, 32GB ECC RAM, and 4 drives in RAID6). All of this is going to be supporting a low maintenance, long periods of no-computers-and-very-little-web-traffic location. This is perfect.What sets this one apart is that it is small, really small, and it has ZERO moving parts. It will not have a fan failure, it will not have a spinning disk doing all the things spinning disks do. It'll be dead quiet, run what I need for it to run, hidden away in a closet, running 24/7.
Of course i could build my very own, for probably half the price and double the specs, but this is not what I am looking for. This is not intended for home tinkers, and the price comes with turnkey (with warranty) setup, and I am willing to pay for that.
We need to end this "it can be done cheaper", someone needs to make a buck on putting capable systems together, with purpose not only to support gamers that would never buy it in the first place, and uses components that are not the 'cheapest possible available'. Otherwise all computers will just be either super expensive for coorporations, or super low budget like half of the SFF units out there today. Who the hell wants an i3 with cheap-ass RAM, slow spinning HD and then the capacity to push out 4k? Who ever buys that is an idiot. You want to build, build... You want to buy a gaming machine, buy a gaming machine, but if you don't understand the target segment of the market does not make it shit. You see computers as a commodity, I see them as things that cost does not really matter, but build quality and purpose does.
Buying this can will last me 5 years in the setting that I am looking for, the components are perhaps not the newest, but HQ stuff, and with no moving parts, protecting it through a HQ UPS, this bad boy will run quietly and smooth.
SkipPerk - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
There are quite a few solutions that really require small form factor, although fanless is not always essential. I have had good luck with dust filters, although a sealed case would be awesome for humidity. Sometimes you simply need to tuck a tiny computer somewhere (often wall mounted between other equipment). That said, I have used tiny Atom boxes and run VM's through them, but they are not so stable. You can set up a Linux box and forget about it.benzosaurus - Sunday, March 12, 2017 - link
Almost specced one of these at work the other day.